Back Before We Met
by theboardwalkbody
Summary: Hermann and Newt are working on a sort of telepathy machine when some miscalculations turn it into a time-machine that takes them back to 2013. Hermann is desperately trying to convince Newt of the urgency for them to return home but Newt is pre-occupied as he ends up bumping into the very girl he's engaged to, a girl he isn't even supposed to meet for another 11 years.
1. Chapter 1

"We're getting married!" Doctor Newton Geiszler shouted as he came sweeping in to the lab. "She said yes! Yes!"

The sudden loudness that filled the room upon his co-workers arrival startled Doctor Hermann Gottlieb so severely he nearly fell off the ladder he was perched on to allow himself to reach the top of the ceiling-high chalk board. "Newton!" he shouted in frustration when he regained his balance. To his further irritation he realized he had dropped the chalk and had to descend the ladder to retrieve it, thus further delaying his work.

"Sorry," Newton said dismissively just to appease the annoyed skinny man, "but she said yes!" He practically danced over to where Herman was scooping up the broken chalk stick. When Hermann stood upright he found himself almost nose to nose with his exuberant co-worker and took a step backward to try to reestablish some form of a comfort zone. Newton, with complete disregard for Hermann's personal space, placed his hands upon the other man's shoulders and gripped them. Hermann cast a confused glance at the hands on his shoulders before looking back at Newton's grinning face with a reproachful look when Newton began to shake him. "We're getting married, man, isn't that amazing!"

"You have only known her for 427 days!" Hermann scoffed. "That is hardly enough time to get to know someone enough to head into a marriage."  
"It is not!" Newton protested. "I know her well enough! Hell, I'd say I know her about as well as I know you and I didn't even have to drift with her first! And what would you have me do anyway? Wait another five years? Sorry, Hermann, I'm not a stickler like you."  
"I never — Oh! Forget it." Hermann walked away, he knew that when it came to arguing with Newton Geiszler 90% of the time he would come out on top, forever getting the last word and declaring himself winner. Still, despite the many arguments they had they were still friends and Hermann was actually happy for his friend even if he wasn't going to say it outright. "And I thought I told you not to call me by my first name!" He added. It was something he had always had to yell about before they drifted and became friends and now it was his way of ending arguments, both of them always had to smile about those days.

"Alright, Dr. Gottlieb." Newton mocked, using his best impression of Hermann, and smiled. "Did you finish the calculations yet? I've already built the damn thing, we could have had it done already if you knew what the hell you were doing."

Hermann sighed. "Well if someone wasn't constantly interrupting me then maybe I'd have had my share done weeks ago!"  
"What do you mean 'interrupting'!? All I do is talk to you!" Newton interjected.  
"Precisely. You never actually stop talking." Hermann told him.  
"You know, if you let me just put my music on —" Newton started.  
"No! Absolutely not! I have no idea how you even call that noise mu—" Hermann argued.  
"It's not noise!" Newton countered.

The argument over Newton's music was an old but true one. It never seemed to fail that on an almost daily basis the subject would come up and the outcome was always the same. Unless Hermann was out of the lab the music could not play. Newton knew this was the way it was going to stay yet he was always the one to instigate the argument. It was just one of those arguments he couldn't win but at least the arguing was better than the silence Hermann would have preferred. It was the real reason he always started it, it was his way of tricking Hermann into talking about something while they worked.

The two worked, and argued on and off, until the sun went down. It was then Hermann decided he needed a break for the night.

"How close is it to done?" Newton asked him from over on his side of the lab.  
"I've only got two more calculations to make and then we can begin testing it." Hermann informed him.  
"Two! You've only got two left and you're calling it a day! We could be done by midnight! We could have a whole system up and running. Man, you gotta finish it now! Come on! It's gonna be so cool. How can you just leave now?" Newton began rambling.  
"Goodnight, Newton." Hermann grabbed his coat and left the lab.

Newton considered chasing after him and forcing him to finish the project, after all it wouldn't be that hard to catch up to him, but he decided against it. No, he figured he would just finish the final calculations himself. It was only two, after all, and then he could run the tests and the next morning when Hermann showed up the whole thing would be finished anyway! Yes, that is what he decided to do.

It took him hours. The calculations Hermann had left incomplete were a little out of his area of expertise and he spent quite some amount of time just staring at the hundreds of numbers and letters written in chalk. When the staring wasn't getting him anywhere he switched on his music as loud as he could handle (which was pretty loud) and took a beer from the mini fridge over on his side of the lab hoping that relaxing a little might help him think better. Hours passed and a beer turned into several but at some point around dawn he declared himself finished and triumphantly he jumped off the ladder and staggered across the room to the machine that was waiting to be tested.

"I'll show him! I did it! Me! Not him. Me!" Newton laughed as he got down on the floor and shimmed himself under the machine. He spent quite a while under it messing with wires and tubes and the like before he pushed himself back out. Covered in a fair amount of grease he stood up and lifted a helmet-like device, similar to the ones used for drifting, and placed it on his head. He switched the machine on and punched some numbers in on a keypad. "Alright. Time to test this baby out."

"Newton Geiszler what the devil are you doing!" came a shout from the other end of the room. Newton spun around and was met with a completely vexed Herman. Newton wasn't sure if the man's anger stemmed from the music that was still playing or from seeing that he had stayed the night to complete the project without him, whatever it was Newton didn't much care at this point and he flicked the machine on.  
"Don't you dare!" Hermann shouted, but Newton ignored him.

Hermann crossed the room as quickly as he could but it wasn't fast enough. Newton vanished before his eyes before Hermann ever reached him. He panicked. That wasn't supposed to happen. The machine wasn't supposed to make people disappear. It was supposed to transport their thoughts out to others in attempt to find other beings, like the Kaijus, it wasn't supposed to transport the whole person.  
"Damn it." Hermann cursed. He had a pretty good idea what had gone wrong. Whatever Newton had done with the machine he'd made it so that it acted as a teleportation device and Hermann had only one option now. He had to go find him.

Muttering every foul thing he had ever wanted to say about Newton under his breath he reached out and grabbed the second helmet, put it on, and slammed his fist down on the big ,red 'go' button (as Newton insisted it had to actually be a big, red, 'go' button because for some reason he found it funny but the joke was lost on Hermann) and disappeared from the room as well leaving Newton's music to continuously fill the room despite them being absent from it.


	2. Chapter 2

Hermann closed his eyes tightly and took a deep breath before he pressed the button and hurtled himself God knows where. He felt a force pull at him and suddenly he found himself winded and gasping for air on a warm, hard ground. He blinked several times as his eyes adjusted to the bright light of wherever he had wound up and once he got his breath back he stood up and looked around. His new location was absolutely unmistakable; New York City, more specifically, Times Square. There was something off about it, however, but he couldn't think about it right then as he still had a certain self-proclaimed genius to find. He did a three-sixty and was relieved to see he wouldn't have to do go around an entire city looking for one man at all. Newton was standing, staring around in wonder, only several feet away.

"Newton!" Hermann limped over to him as fast as he could. "What the hell have you done? We need to go back -"  
"Do you know where we are?" Newt asked him.  
"I - Well, yes, I know where we are!" He thought it was a pretty stupid question and it threw him off slightly. Surely Newt knew where they were. "But we need to get back to Shatterdome."  
"I mean, do you know when we are?" His voice possessed both excitement, that airy sound a voice takes on when one is shocked.  
"When?" Hermann looked around and that feeling that something was definitely off intensified. It took him several seconds before he saw the date on a scrolling LED sign. It felt like he had been winded all over again when he saw the sign flash August 1 2013. "Fuck."

Newt had never heard Hermann curse before and had he not been incredibly proud of what he had created as well as incredibly worried about what he would do now he would have clapped the man on the back and laughed.

Always the rational one Hermann regained his composure and addressed the situation. "Okay, okay. Newton, we need to get back. Somehow we have to get back. We just have to rebuild the machine and you have to remember whatever screwed up equation you had come up with, and we go back. Sure, we can't do this in one day so we'll need somewhere to stay. Did you bring money?"

Newt turned to shoot him a look. "Yeah, I brought my piggy bank with me on a trip to a chair that was supposed to transport my brain waves."  
"Don't be an ass, Newton, not now. We are knee deep in shit and we need to work together to get back." Hermann snapped. "I have a grand total of two-hundred dollars on me and a credit card with a 1,000 dollar limit. Unfortunately that card was not issued to me until 2022 and it probably wont work. So listen, we need to find an incredibly cheap space and build this bloody machine immediately."  
"Yeah, fine." Newt replied. He knew Hermann was right. They couldn't stay stuck in the past, they were needed back in the present and that was that. Besides, some of his favorite songs hadn't been written yet so what was the point in staying indefinitely.

While the surprise of being transported not only thousands of miles away from Hong Kong but also being transported years into the past was something to marvel at neither of them thought they would be in for too many other surprises. They knew what happened in 2013 and they had both been to New York so there was nothing that could offer much surprise there, but as they turned a corner and put themselves in theater district they quickly realized there were going to be a lot of things to watch out for.

Several feet down the block Hermann came to a dead stop. Newt, who had been walking leisurely a few paces behind so that he could look around, bumped into him. "What? What's wrong?"  
"N-nothing. We have to go." Hermann stuttered and turned on his heal to head in the opposite direction.  
"Yeah, we are, but wait!" Newton walked after him. "Wait! Why are you turning around? Where are you going?"  
"We just have to go this way." Hermann argued.  
"We just came from that way!" Newt countered. "I'm going back that way, I don't know what you're problem is."  
"No!" Hermann shouted, but Newt wasn't listening, he'd already turned back around and was briskly walking back in the direction they were originally heading. "Come back!"

Newt found out very quickly what was wrong with Hermann when he got closer to the line waiting outside of one of the many theaters along the block. He looked younger, and he most definitely had a different (and Newt thought a much better) sense of style, but it was unmistakably Hermann, a twelve years younger Hermann Gottlieb. He had to take advantage of the situation.

The younger version of Hermann definitely looked a lot cooler than the present day Hermann. He wore a plain purple cotton shirt but he wore a pair of dark, tight-fitting, skinny jeans and his sneakers were scuffed. Never before had Newt ever even thought Hermann would even own a pair of jeans and sneakers. His hair was styled in a messy fashion and was cut in a way much more flattering than that weird cut he had worn for the duration of the time Newt had known him. He was standing in line to see some musical or other, Newt didn't care which, all that mattered to him was that he was seeing one in the first place. Newt also noticed that Hermann's cane was missing from the picture and his posture was much better.

Newt walked up to the younger Hermann and stopped. "Excuse me. Is your name Hermann?"  
The younger Hermann looked confused and a little creeped out. "Who wants to know?"  
Newt didn't know what he was expecting but Hermann's accent was stronger than the present day Hermann's. "Confidential." Newt leaned closer and whispered, "Undercover agent, I don't want to make a scene here."  
The young Hermann looked nervous now, apparently he had believed the lie. "Yes. It is. What's going on?"  
Newt bit back a laugh. "I need you to do something very important."  
"Me? What could I - " the past Hermann started.  
"Let's just say I have sources, very reliable sources, that told me that your going to end up changing." Newt started.  
"Changing?" Young Hermann's absolute faith in what Newt was telling him started turning into skepticism.  
"Yes. It's very serious. One day you're dress sense is going to be come very lame." Newt couldn't stop the grin from spreading across his face.  
The younger Hermann saw through him now. "Listen, I don't know who you are but if you don't get lost I swear I'll kick your ass."  
Newt laughed. "Don't worry, I'm going."

He turned and walked back to where he'd last left the Hermann that he knew but as he was walking away he heard the past version of Hermann call him an asshole. It only made him laugh more. He was still laughing when he reached the current version of Hermann who was standing with his back against a brick wall and the look of absolute anger and impatience on his face.

"How dare you!" Hermann stepped forward and got in Newt's face when he had gotten close enough.  
"Man, what happened to you?" Newt laughed, "Why did you never tell me you weren't always so dull?"  
"Shut up, Newton." Hermann began walking away from the block and his past self knowing that this time Newt had no choice but to follow him.  
"What? Man, you seemed so cool back there! I mean, your hair alone! What the hell changed?" Newt began rambling on about the past Hermann's fashion sense and attitude completely unaware of the man walking in front of him's feelings.

Newt finally got the hint when Hermann all but threw it in his face. Hermann stopped again and turned around to face him. Newt realized now that Hermann's eyes had began to water and he was having trouble keeping a straight face to seem like he wasn't about to start crying. Never before had Newt seen Hermann get so upset about something.

"You want to know what happened?" Hermann's voice was dripping with rage and hurt. "This happened."  
Suddenly Hermann had thrown his cane at Newt. It didn't really hurt but the surprise of the action made Newt take a step back. "That happened to me and I changed."

Newt stared wide-eyed at him and asked him, in a very hushed voice, "Why didn't I see that in the Drift?"  
"Maybe because you only see what you want to see. You were too focused on a Kaiju to remember anything about me." Hermann spat and turned and began limping away from both Newt and the cane he hated having to use.

Newt thought about that. He always did focus more on the monsters than on the people and he knew it was one of his faults. He just didn't think he overlooked people so badly that he would completely miss information that was put directly into his brain through a drift. He bent over to pick up Hermann's cane and jogged over to him.

"I'm sorry, man." Newt said when he caught up. "I know, people and I don't mix all the time. I should have known, and I didn't. I'm sorry."  
Hermann didn't answer, he was still preoccupied with keeping his emotions in check.  
"Please, man, I'm sorry." Newt looked down at the cane in his hand and back up. "Do you want this back now?"  
Hermann didn't stop but he put his hand out for it and took it from Newt.  
"Hermann?" Newt asked. Maybe prior to drifting with Hermann he didn't care if the man was pissed off at him or not but post drift he did. Their friendship was rocky, but it was a friendship nonetheless.  
"I don't want to talk about it." Hermann replied in a shaky voice and that was that. They continued the rest of the walk in silence.


End file.
